Twice this month, this col­umn has ad­dressed the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s use of se­lec­tive, com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment process­es to se­lect con­trac­tors for ma­jor hous­ing projects in Trinidad. The is­sue was high­light­ed on June 4 un­der the head­line Who will ben­e­fit from the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion projects? and on June 11, with the head­line, Will the OPR do the right thing? Both of those com­men­taries looked at the pro­cure­ment de­ci­sions made by State en­ti­ties, the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) and Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties Ltd.

It is a fact that the com­pa­ny Mooti­lal Ramhit & Sons Con­tract­ing was se­lect­ed by Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties to re­ceive a $129.83 mil­lion con­tract to con­struct 100 hous­es us­ing the de­sign, build fi­nance mod­el at the Al­lam­by res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment in Corinth, San Fer­nan­do, in April 2026. The same com­pa­ny was se­lect­ed by the HDC to re­ceive a $1 bil­lion con­tract in April 2026. That con­tract was part of the $3.4 bil­lion in con­tracts the HDC pro­posed to award to 11 lo­cal firms, al­so us­ing the de­sign-build-fi­nance mod­el.

Oth­er in­tend­ed awardees in­clud­ed Hakim Ho­sein Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny, Cal­i­for­nia Stuc­co Com­pa­ny, CE Man­age­ment and Ser­vices, Kei­th’s Trans­port and Gen­er­al Con­tract­ing Ser­vice, Trinidad Pro Con­struc­tion, Oil­field and In­dus­tri­al Hard­ware and Bris­tol Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny.

On April 17, the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) in­ter­vened in the HDC’s pro­cure­ment process and di­rect­ed the cor­po­ra­tion to sus­pend it pend­ing a re­view. The reg­u­la­tor’s in­ter­ven­tion came af­ter stake­hold­ers raised con­cerns re­gard­ing the HDC’s com­pli­ance with the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion and the man­ner in which the ex­er­cise was con­duct­ed.

It is note­wor­thy that last week Wednes­day, the HDC is­sued a no­tice can­celling the $3.4 bil­lion in con­tracts, but there has been no word about whether Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties would do the same.

In the no­tice is­sued by the HDC, it out­lined the fol­low­ing:

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion here­by no­ti­fies all par­tic­i­pat­ing pro­po­nents that the pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings for the above-ref­er­enced project RFP No. 050126 – DBF – Port­fo­lio 1) have been can­celled pur­suant to Sec­tion 33 of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015 (as amend­ed), with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

“Fol­low­ing com­ple­tion of the eval­u­a­tion process and the ex­pi­ra­tion of the stand­still pe­ri­od es­tab­lished pur­suant to sec­tion 35 of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015, as amend­ed, the HDC has de­ter­mined that it is in the pub­lic in­ter­est and in ac­cor­dance with the Act to dis­con­tin­ue the pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings for this project.

“The stand­still pe­ri­od pre­scribed un­der sec­tion 35 has elapsed, and no con­tract has been en­tered in­to with any sup­pli­er or con­trac­tor. Con­se­quent­ly, no No­tice of Ac­cep­tance shall be is­sued un­der sec­tion 35(6), and no pro­cure­ment con­tract shall arise from these pro­ceed­ings.

“The rea­sons for this can­cel­la­tion have been record­ed in the pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings record in ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion 33 of the Act.

“The HDC thanks all pro­po­nents for their par­tic­i­pa­tion in this pro­cure­ment process.”

Sec­tion 33 of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015 (as amend­ed), does al­low a procur­ing en­ti­ty to can­cel a pro­cure­ment process, “at any time pri­or to the ac­cep­tance of the suc­cess­ful sub­mis­sion; or af­ter the suc­cess­ful sub­mis­sion is ac­cept­ed un­der the cir­cum­stances re­ferred to in sec­tion 35(6).

But sec­tion 33 (3) of the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion states, “The de­ci­sion of a procur­ing en­ti­ty to can­cel a pro­cure­ment and the rea­sons for its de­ci­sion shall be in­clud­ed in the record of the pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings and prompt­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed to any sup­pli­er or con­trac­tor who pre­sent­ed a sub­mis­sion.”

So T&T’s pro­cure­ment law oblig­ed the HDC to pro­vide the rea­sons for its de­ci­sion to can­cel the $3.4 bil­lion in HDC con­tracts. The HDC said its de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue the con­tracts was based on its de­ter­mi­na­tion that “it is in the pub­lic in­ter­est” to do so.

Ques­tions:

* Does the OPR ac­cept that sec­tion 33 (3) of T&T’s pro­cure­ment law is prop­er­ly sat­is­fied sim­ply by the HDC de­ter­min­ing that it was “in the pub­lic in­ter­est” to can­cel the $3.4 bil­lion con­tracts?

* Shouldn’t the HDC, as the procur­ing en­ti­ty, ex­plain how the can­cel­la­tion of these con­tracts is in the pub­lic in­ter­est?

It is in­ter­est­ing that it was Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der who pro­vid­ed an ex­pla­na­tion for the HDC’s de­ci­sion to can­cel the $3.4 bil­lion in con­tracts, and not the ac­tu­al Min­is­ter of Hous­ing, David Lee.

Ac­cord­ing to a sto­ry by Guardian Me­dia’s lead ed­i­tor, pol­i­tics, Akash Sama­roo, pub­lished last Fri­day, Mr Alexan­der said the Gov­ern­ment took the de­ci­sion to can­cel the $3.4 bil­lion in HDC con­tracts “be­fore it be­came some­thing that was just go­ing to drag on.”

He said, “It was go­ing to be a back and forth, and be­fore it be­came some­thing that was just go­ing to drag on, we’re not leav­ing it in lim­bo,” Alexan­der told Guardian Me­dia.

He is quot­ed as say­ing, “We took the de­ci­sion to say, look, you’re not hap­py with this process, we’re go­ing to pull it. We’re go­ing to come back at it, where any of the is­sues that you had a con­cern with be­fore will not ex­ist...

“We re­al­ly don’t ap­pre­ci­ate wast­ing this time here, be­cause we re­al­ly want to de­liv­er the hous­es. So that’s why we’re adding more projects to the roll­out. So in­stead of 11, it might be 21.

“These same projects that have been pulled here will be reis­sued to­geth­er with more, and every sin­gle de­vel­op­er, be­cause that was the num­ber one com­plaint that we got, that some peo­ple felt like they didn’t get time to ten­der, so now every­body has a chance.”

This seems like an ac­knowl­edge­ment that the ini­tial $3.4 bil­lion in con­tracts for the con­struc­tion of thou­sands of hous­es was doomed to get bogged down by hear­ings held by the OPR and po­ten­tial le­gal chal­lenges of the out­comes of the reg­u­la­to­ry process.

The Gov­ern­ment must have en­vis­aged that con­tin­u­ing to sup­port what was clear­ly a flawed process used by the HDC had the po­ten­tial to mean that no hous­es would get built in the four years re­main­ing of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s term of of­fice.

De­spite Mr Alexan­der’s pledge that every­one will have a chance to bid when the ex­pand­ed port­fo­lio of hous­es is put back out to ten­der by the HDC, does that mean that the out­come of the sec­ond pro­cure­ment process will be dif­fer­ent from the first process?

I have my doubts:

* It is clear, in my view, that the se­lec­tive, com­pet­i­tive ten­der­ing process—which was used by both HDC and Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties—is li­able to be chal­lenged in the fu­ture be­cause it ex­cludes cer­tain con­trac­tors, and is there­fore in­trin­si­cal­ly un­fair.

If the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion is in­ter­est­ed in fair­ness, it would en­sure that all qual­i­fied home builders who meet rea­son­able fi­nan­cial, track record, qual­i­ty, and oth­er bench­marks should be al­lowed to bid;

* Even an open, com­pet­i­tive bid­ding process may not be enough, as the HDC em­ploy­ees are ca­pa­ble of rec­om­mend­ing the award of con­tracts to com­pa­nies, that should be in­el­i­gi­ble. The proof of this state­ment comes from the Ju­ly 2024 an­nounce­ment that HDC is­sued a no­tice of an in­ten­tion to award a con­tract to de­sign and build hous­es in San­ta Rosa, Ari­ma, to Chi­na Har­bour En­gi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd. Con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous re­port­ing by Guardian Me­dia in­di­cates that the Chi­nese firm bid $475.83 mil­lion, but was not the low­est bid­der for the con­tract.

Ac­cord­ing to a no­tice at­tached to the an­nounce­ment, sev­er­al lo­cal con­tract­ing firms sub­mit­ted bids for the project, but were not suc­cess­ful. Ju­nior Sam­my Con­struc­tion sub­mit­ted a bid for $419.22 mil­lion, Mooti­lal Ramhit & Sons Con­tract­ing sub­mit­ted a bid for $344.15 mil­lion, and NH In­ter­na­tion­al (Caribbean) put in a bid of $259.61 mil­lion. That con­tract was al­so can­celled.

* If most of the 11 pro­posed bid­ders for the $3.4 bil­lion HDC con­tracts were fi­nanciers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, how is the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion go­ing to ex­plain to those fi­nanciers that a hous­ing pro­cure­ment process re­sults in them not be­ing se­lect­ed, while con­trac­tors who they as­sume to have fi­nanced the now Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment get the nod?